In The DOJ Crosshairs: Journalists Who Do Their Job

Keeping the folks in Oklahoma in my thoughts and prayers as they continue to deal with the aftereffects of a MASSIVE tornado, and grieve the loss of life, and home. My heart goes out to the parents who lost children when the tornado hit their school. I cannot imagine their anguish. The loss across the board, human, animal, home, business, and more, is just staggering. And yet, these strong people have already begun the hard work necessary to get their community back. Please know that we are with you, we support you, and we will do what we can to help you.

So this is how this Administration is going to take care of those pesky investigative reporters who are actually doing their job – investigating, and reporting. How DARE they. Cannot allow them to do their job, ESPECIALLY if it looks bad for the White House. Ahem.

Yeah, so the DOJ has been investigating Fox News reporter, James Rosen. Believe it or not, but this story was actually carried by the Washington Post. I know, I was surprised, too, but since the whole revelation about the DOJ essentially spying on AP reporters, they seem to have gotten a spur in their saddle and are actually doing their jobs.

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

At a time when President Obama’s administration is under renewed scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, the Kim case provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of one such probe.

Well, that isn’t the least bit disconcerting, is it? Yeah. Right.

There is more, and it gets worse:

Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin, who has represented the Associated Press, but not in the current case. “That’s a very dangerous road to go down.”

Obama last week defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation involving the AP, which is focused on who leaked information to the news organization about a foiled plot involving the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. AP executives and First Amendment watchdogs have criticized the Justice Department in part for the broad scope of the phone records it secretly subpoenaed from AP offices in Washington, Hartford, Conn., and New York.

“The latest events show an expansion of this law enforcement technique,” said attorney Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges filed in 2010 that he disclosed national defense information. A trial is possible as soon as 2014. “Individual reporters or small time periods have turned into 20 [telephone] lines and months of records with no obvious attempt to be targeted or narrow.”[…] (Click here to read the rest.)

There is much more to this story, and I encourage you to read the rest, but as suspected, Rosen was not the ONLY one at Fox to feel the breath of the DOJ down their necks.

[…] James Rosen was not the only Fox reporter tracked by the Obama/Holder Department of Justice. Fox reporter William LaJeunesse and producer Mike Levine were reportedly also subjected to serious invasions of their privacy.

In order to obtain the information that the DOJ sought, it had to accuse the media workers of engaging in criminal conspiracy. In the affidavit accusing Rosen, the FBI accuses him of using “flattery” and persuasion to obtain information from his source, and of using pseudonyms and a special communications method to meet and to pass on information.

Every reporter who has ever written an exclusive based on unnamed sources has done what Rosen is accused of doing. It is not criminal activity, it is reporting. In Rosen’s case, he was working on obtaining classified information. Again, though, many reporters who have worked on national security issues have tried to obtain classified information from sources. The government routinely classifies information that has no business being classified. The First Amendment protects reporters’ freedom to try to obtain whatever information they can in pursuit of stories. Accusing them of criminal activity is extremely rare.[…] (Click here to read the rest.)

I doubt these were the only ones at Fox News to be so chosen, and time will tell about that. But this Administration seems hellbent on infringing upon our Constitutional rights. This isn’t the first time, of course, only the first time the MSM really started paying attention.

40 Responses to “In The DOJ Crosshairs: Journalists Who Do Their Job”

It is stunning, isn’t it? I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the Lame Stream Media to wake from its stupor and actually investigate the clown THEY put in the White House.

On a related matter, I watched an interview yesterday with the woman who started True the Vote. She said she finally had it when the ATF made its second visit. This isn’t just about delaying 403(c) tax exempt applications of Tea Party organizations by the IRS, this is about outright intimidation of anyone perceived to be opposed to Obama. I suppose wanting to make sure that only people legally entitled to vote in this country are the ones who vote amounts to opposition to Obama.

It’s disgusting and I can’t believe all those delusional Obama supporters out there aren’t at least a little bit queasy about all this.

Yeah, I’m not holding my breath, either, but at least they are talking abt this at least, so that’s an improvement, I reckon. But you are right, they did help put him in there, and I don’t imagine they are prepared to sit down to a dinner of crow…

That woman, Catherine Engelbrecht, is amazing, but what she had to endure from our gov’t, the clearly ORCHESTRATED abuse of a private citizen, is staggering.

I just find this kind of thing absurd. The planet has ALWAYS cleansed itself through hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and fires – ALWAYS. It is how it takes care of itself.

For instance, I live in a hurricane prone area – we all know it. It always HAS been hurricane prone, way before carbon issues and Sequestration. That is just the most LUDICROUS thing. And the same is true for that area of OK. They KNOW it is tornado-prone, and have worked to minimize the damage from them, but there is no way to STOP them.

We make our home on a living organism. YES, we need to take care of the planet, and do what is best by it, but to blame POLITICIANS for these kinds of disasters is just grandstanding at its worst.

And Helenk – you are exactly right. Most people are asking what they can do, not blaming someone else for it.

Whitehouse has had to “apologize” for his remark. Says he didn’t “know” about the tornado in Moore Ok. Just another member of our dysfunctional government that doesn’t appear to know anything but runs his big mouth anyway.

most Americans would be asking the people of Oklahoma ” how can we help you”. You and other democrats made a political issue out of a major catastrophe. You make me ashamed that I was ever a democrat. where is the democratic party that had morals and compassion? was that trashed in 2008 like my vote?

You tell her, Helenk! I swear, I just said to my partner this morning that it seems so many in this country have lost a sense of ethics, morality, and I would add, COMPASSION. How in the hell, in the face of this terrible disaster, are people attacking the other side, laughing it off because they are “just” Conservatives, etc.? We used to come together as AMERICANS, but that seems to be passe these days. I don’t get it…

Obama Admin has way overplayed it’s hand on this one. Obama may be popular but Holder and the DOJ? Not so much.

And as more reporters names appear on the DOJ hit list there will be a few, too few IMO, reporters who will be uncomfortable enough with the behavior to speak out. Because even through their slobbering love affair, they know that if they get out of line, they and their news organizations could be next.

Even one of my used-to-be favorites, Major Garrett, who has stopped being the furious seeker of facts he was when he was at FOX, now writes a negative column about the Obama admin. I had thought that since he went to the National Journal he’d had all his teeth pulled.

I just saw an article by Simon at PJ Media that some more people are going to come forth and give some explosive testimony. He said it is still hearsay at this point, but sounds like things are starting to come out abt this, including info damaging to Clinton.

And can I just say, a friend recently spoke abt supporting Clinton in 2016 if she runs because of how busy she was as SoS. I am not sure when how many places one went to equated to the level of performance. She acknowledged that Benghazi was something with which Clinton will have to deal, but still – Benghazi was a mess because of policies by State, and then there are all the other places worse off AFTER Clinton was Sos than they were before, like, say, our relationship with Israel. Or take Egypt, for example. Just saying.

I just saw this headline on Drudge and I laughed myself silly. One has to take one’s laughs where you can find them these days. Don’t you think Obama’s coterie is having a cow at the prospect of a high ranking IRS official taking the Fifth before Congress. Can it get any worse – visually, at least?

I loved this paragraph from an article at Commentary Magazine about Ms. Lerner taking the 5th:

The agency that once was best known for being used to nail criminals like Al Capone, who could not be successfully prosecuted for their violent crimes but were vulnerable because they didn’t pay enough taxes, is now going to have a top official acting like a mafia button man on the hot seat.

Senate staffers told Breitbart News on Monday evening that Senate Democrats are trying to rush the bill to the Senate floor now, as the majority of the American people are distracted following all the scandals hitting President Barack Obama’s administration so they cannot follow all the details of what is happening in this process.

“There is a relentless drive to push this bill through at any cost because it’s backers know that once the American people find out what’s in it they will rise up against it,” a Republican Senate aide said, for instance.